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Shipping a moose shoulder mount

I'm trying to ship a moose shoulder mount from Michigan to Colorado. I've received a price from "Trophy transport" which I thought was high and I was wondering if anyone has used another shipping company to ship an uncrated mount. Any suggestions are deeply appreciated.
Thank You

This has been an issue of discussion at the shop I worked at many times...and I have talked with other taxis who swear that if the freight company can see the mount through plastic they will be less likely to damage it, but I personally prefer to have cardboard around the crates I send as an issue of privacy (or not pissing some anti hunter off enough to 'whoops' I accidentally ran a fork through that mount)...But have thought about switching to 1/8" plywood or similar type material because I have seen very well crated mounts (surrounded by cardboard) completely ruined by freight companies - when the fork from the forklift went right through the cardboard or when another crate was rammed through the cardboard.....

I am pretty much of the opinion that it depends on if the forklift operator really cares about what he/she is doing. LOL..I do think having plastic around the mount could prevent the freight company from placing heavy items on top of the crate...But in the end maybe it just boisl down to '****ed if you do, ****ed if you don't'. Either way, freighting mounts is not cheap.

As for the OP's original request... you might give Roadway a call, not sure if they will do business with a 'non business owner' customer, but worth a try.

Shipping is expensive. When I was running the shop at the 777 Ranch about 80% of what I did was shipped so we built a lot of crates. In fact we finally ended up hiring a freight company to build our crates for us wholesale and pass the cost on to the customers. As has been mentioned, don't ship it uncrated. All my crates are built using firing strips or 2x2's and plywood(thickness depends on how big). Ive never trusted the cardboard sided crates. Also don't use an air stapler, use screws to put it together. Also take 2x4's and run them along the bottom so that the forklift can get under your crate.

We had a guy run a skid through an elephant skull inside a crate on its way from Botswana. Right through 1/2 plywood, both sides, so the stronger the better.

I personally would just build it myself. I wouldn't take a fair amount of precaution before I ship something that i probably paid around 12-1500 to have a moose shoulder mounted in the first place. might even be able to find someone going that way to bring it with them and pay them a little money to ensure it gets there safely.

R.J., do you do detachable antlers for shipping your moose mounts, or does it depend on the customer? I sent a friend to Knight's here in Anchorage; they went with detachable antlers and I think it drastically reduced shipping costs by reducing the size of the crate. Just wondering.

If the client wants to pay for detachable, I do it. It does make the crate smaller and saves some money. Some guys don't like the idea of the integrity of their rack changed though. And we do charge for the detachable antlers.

We charge $ 250. to put removable in & yes it does reduce the size of the box, a lot of times it works out the same after the total balance is added up.

It DOES make it easier to move through doors there is no question about that , BUT, it is also not as Strongas a solid skull plate if it will be carried around by the antlers like most of us do.

We actually Weld our solid stock together under the skull plate so there is no chance of slack or the fill agent giving out due to stress my weight.

Also , When we do them for LARGE moose we always tell them to put the antlers on the mount BEFORE putting it on the wall .

If not the mount could turn with one antler on the mounting bolt & either twist off of the wall or the single antler could slip out & come crashing down breaking EVERYTHING under it. ( As you can tell, This happened to one of my clients)

I should also mention though that we are a Dedicated shipper with this freight company because we ship so many crates with them & also we have another way we save the customers a bunch is combining shipments on the ship into units, then they get shipped individualy when they reach Washington.